Wednesday, November 4, 2009

I was driving to work this morning when my thoughts were interrupted by a Taco Bell commercial. Taco Bell’s new ‘Black Jack Taco’ commercial to be exact. The words, “Black eye, black sheep, black jack, black taco,” were cooed into my ear over some dance music.

I don’t have cable so it was up to my imagination to decipher what they meant exactly. However, when ‘black taco’ is whispered into my ear like that, there are only a few places my mind will take me. So yes, for a brief moment my mind went there. And all I could do was hope the ‘black taco’ didn’t come with sour cream, and condoms. (Which I found out it doesn’t, thank God.)

After my perverted mind came back into reality I became slightly offended. Either their marketing team needs to get laid or fired. I know the economy is bad, so I’m not going to be the person to write the angry black taco letter to headquarters to get someone fired. However, there is no way to incorporate the color of the taco shell into that ad without being offensive.

Some things are just better left unsaid. Black, red, white tacos all just sound wrong. Can’t it just be a taco? Why must they associate color with it. Ok yeah I get that it’s physically black, I can see the damn thing, but come on. I can’t help but give the side eye when the message of their slogan is basically, ‘come eat our 89 cent black taco’…

I'll admit they walked a really fine line with this, and I can't really blame you for coming to that conclusion, but ultimately I'm going to err on the side of no. The background music was more like something white European electronica than anything black.Now as far as Taco Bell goes, it was the first thing I ate New Year's Day 2000 (nothing else was open) and it tasted like nothing, so... no.